Limited movie runs: 'Ucho'

Updated 10:00 pm, Thursday, May 19, 2005

Karel Kachnya's savage satire of Czechoslovakia's repressive post-1986 Soviet oligarchy was banned upon completion in 1970. The wonder is that he was allowed to even make it in the first place.

A senior ministry official and his wife return home from a government party to find their house doused in darkness, the doors unlocked and the place under surveillance.

Convinced he's the next target in a party putsch, he starts flushing his official papers while his wife keeps up a running diatribe for the benefit of "the Ear" (the listening devices planted through the house). The most insidious part of Kachnya's mordant portrait of political paranoia and authoritarian intimidation is the brazen manner of the campaign of terror.

There's no attempt to hide the surveillance and the couple plays along with the charade like characters out of "1984," alternately turning on one another with vicious verbal assaults and reaching out for human comfort, right down to the chilling finale. There's not a more acerbic, scathing or compelling critique of the Communist regime. (Sean Axmaker)

GRADE: A

At Grand Illusion today through Thursday. In Czech with English subtitles. 94 minutes. No rating. B&W.